


Bad Luck

by frooit



Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: And cigarettes, Angst, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, One Shot, looking back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 08:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frooit/pseuds/frooit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day dreaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Luck

Dropping a cigarette is bad luck. Dropping eighteen plus because that's how many you have left in this twisted pack (twisted from a twisted trip down a twisted road, more dust than breathing air), is deadly. Cloud never used to smoke. He didn't need to smoke. By rights, this pack isn't even his, it's Cid's. He just got stuck with it like everything else. Like Sephiroth, and being a hero, and saving the Planet, saving your friends, your neck, your head, your everything under the sun. ( _The hero:_ a man, who is endowed with great courage and strength; especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life. Yeah.) He heard it was bad luck from someone along the way, still believing in folk lore instead of what was outside their door. Superstition and monsters aside you can't stay inside forever.

And all of a sudden that reminds him of Zack. All or nothing, happy-go-lucky, happy-go-insane. Always being reminded. Ash and rocks, that old smell, the smell of leather and wet plants, the smell of villages burning being carried on the wind. Sadness. Cigarette butts in the cracks of rock and dried out soil—Midgar. Different places, but all the same because Zack was with him then. He wasn't apart of how he spoke or walked or dragged his sword yet. Not yet. He was still alive, and what happened then would drive anybody a little crazy.

Sephiroth. He shakes out a cigarette. Touches his phone looking for the scrounged up lighter (it's a new mobile, he lost his other in an accident a while back—the lighter's from Tifa, his favourite pack rat). His fingers twitch and he locates the metal, the cold. Brushes it off and cups a hand (gloves, leather, rush of remembrance, rush of nothing) over his face to hide the flame from the desert's gasp. Always windy here, always coming back to that name. He said to stay quietly. And maybe he is, and maybe he isn't, but that face, the _green_ of his eyes—they're still vivid, there. Mako green has a way of getting under your skin... he should know.

Naive once, excited once. Once in SOLDIER, always a SOLDIER.

He'd like to not believe that.

"Day dreaming."

Cloud breathes, the smoke burning lungs still not used to the feeling.


End file.
